Squash

You know those days when even though you manage to get out of bed to do your workout, you find yourself looking at the trainer saying to yourself, “I don’t know if I can do this”? Walking down the stairs at the house this morning I could feel the effects of yesterday’s run. I found the 8 minute warm up on the Chris Carmichael DVD to be more difficult than it should. The easy chain ring was only allowing me to churn out 80 RPMs this morning. The first set of intervals was 5 sets of 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off, followed by 4, 3, and 2 sets. I was able to complete these, but was not able to enjoy the effects of the recovery. It never seemed to get “easy”. After a 5 minute full recovery, the next set of intervals was 5 sets of 2:00 max effort and 2:00 recovery. During the first set I found myself having to dig deep and find that extra bit of strength that comes from the core. I wasn’t sure that I could keep it up. After the second set, I started looking at the time and allowing myself to reason that this has been a good workout and that if I were to stop, it would be justified. But I continued. Despite having my eyes roll back into my head and my total lack of being able to disguise on my face the pain I was in, I was able to finish all five sets without giving in to the temptation to take it easy. It’s days like this when you don’t feel like you can keep it up or that you have every excuse in the world to call it a day that you can draw upon during the race and know you can dig a little deeper and persevere. I may not have been able to produce elite level watts this morning, but I put a huge deposit in the training bank that will pay dividends down the road.

Shipment from Clif Bar

Oh, it's a good day. I love it when UPS brings something by. It's like having a miniature Christmas. Today, I received a little something from one of my sponsors (read: people I buy stuff from). Opening the box I feel a little like the Old Man from "A Christmas Story" - "Well there could be anything in there!" Well, except that I know exactly what's in there.

It's a little taste of goodness. My favorite type of energy bar hands down, Clif Bar's Blueberry Crisp. You can have your Powerbars and your Snickers Marathon Bars. These daddies are the bomb. The blueberry's (and yes they are real blueberries) keep the bar moist and oh so tasty. Next is a bit of an experiment. I've been a long time fan of Powergel's espresso love, but I decided to give Clif's "double expresso" a try. It has the self attaching tab which cuts down on litter on the road and provides 100 calories with 30 mg of Potassium, 25 g of Carbs, and 40 mg of Sodium. Not a bad mixture.

Lastly, I decided to replace my race hat. I've raced and trained (and pretty much lived in) my blue USAT sweatvac visor. I decided to give Clif and plug and switch it up a bit. It's a sweatvac visor as well so no worries with performance. So yeah, I guess it is all about style.

Training for today:

Swim: 200 warm up, 100 kick, 100 pull, five 200's on 2:45.

Kept good pace throughout the sets. I was consistently between 2:15 and 2:18. Can't be upset with that.

Bike - 40 mins on trainer - easy spin.

That's all for now. Happy training.

Aero Bar Bottle

A while back I mentioned that I was looking into adding a bottle that sits on top of my aero bars. It's a trend that I've started noticing among some of the pro's setups. I have to agree that some of the alternatives out there have left the public wanting. Let's review:

The Profile Design Aero Drink - this invention hit the triathlon world like a storm. It provided a convenient way for the rider to stay hydrated without leaving the aero position. Also, studies were recorded that showed that it was more aerodynamic to have the aero drink on than nothing at all. Supposedly, it broke up the air around the head tube. Finally, it provided an "easy" way to refill the bottle during the ride through the hole in the top. Disadvantages - Annoying as hell. The propensity of the aero drink to lose it's yellow sponge is legendary. It's become almost a game within the race to count the number of sponges on the side of the road during a race. The lost sponge resulted in the rider being deluged with their drink the rest of the ride. Also, unless you used the optional aero drink holder, it was near impossible to keep the bottle straight which helps in producing that aerodynamic effect. These issues have led me to dump the aero drink all together.

The X-Lab Wing - This system which also comes in a more expensive carbon version allows the athlete to place two bottles as well as numerous other bits of gear (tube, air, etc) on the back of their seat. The system puts bottles within easy reach behind the ride which reduces the amount of added wind resistance caused with a bottle on the down tube or seat tube. There is some talk that it creates "dirty air" behind the rider, but I won't get into that. While this system does require the rider to get out of the aero position to reach the bottles, it does make for an easy bottle swap during a race. No need to struggle filling up your aero-drink, just drop a bottle and grab one from the volunteer. Disadvantages - this system launches bottles like it's their job. Slight bumps in the road wreak havoc on these systems. This leads to 1. lose of vital fluids and 2. risk of injury to riders behind you. Sometimes you have find just the right sweet spot for positioning your system which can reduce the number of drops. I have a friend who has loosened his up so that it bounces a little which reduces the shock. I used the X-lab during my IM race this past year and it could have cost me my race if it hadn't been for well spaced aid stations. See the picture below. Notice the odd looking water bottle on my seat tube and only one bottle in my X-lab holder. At this point, I was had lost two bottles. This was not the way I had intended to ride.

So when I saw bottles being attached directly to the aero bars I got a little excited. I doing my research I discovered that the two above-mentioned companies had already developed and were marketing products that allowed you to attach the bottle. Profile's was cheap but looked effective. X-Lab went all out and created an all carbon version. Understandably, it isn't cheap. So what's a spend thrift guy like me to do? Well, I copied the X-Lab version seen below.

I took a hard piece of plastic and a pattern based on a printed picture of X-Lab's version. Drilled the appropriate holes and attached a cage. I used pull ties to attach the holder to my aero bars. They are hidden from the wind and are virtually weightless. I'm not sure how it will hold up to the rigors of the season, but for zero investment I think I have a pretty good alternative. We'll see how it goes. Here are some pics.

Tough week so far.

In my never ending quest to swimbikerun faster, I am constantly working to push myself just a little harder and a little faster than my last workout. The winter months have come and gone. So has the time to work on endurance. Spring is here and it's time to work on speed. I don't feel too fast right now, but I now have some base line numbers with which to build my season on.

Tuesday, I ran a self timed and mapped 5K route to see how far off my numbers are from last year. I was pleased to see that I was only 45 seconds down from last year's peak. This number will still need to improve past my best last year as the run is still where I tend to lose time.

Wednesday was an interval workout in the pool. The plan was to do 5 sets of 150's on 2:50. This means, you finish in whatever time you finish, but when 2:50 is up you start again. After the 5 sets, we dropped the time 5 seconds and did 4 sets. We repeated this process down to 1 set of 150 on 2:30. It ends up being 2250 yards of intervals. While it never seemed that I had enough of a breather between sets, I was able to keep my speed with my last set coming in at 2:17. I'm proud of that. I have to give some of the credit to my attempts to actually kick while swimming rather than just relying on my arms.

This morning, Thursday, we have a regular 7.6 mile route that we run through the tiny kingdom. Last week, we just missed our goal pace by 23 seconds. The rain forced us to take our run in doors this morning and attempt to best our time on the dreadmill. (yeah, I know we're sissies who don't like getting wet). We knew that this wouldn't perfectly correlate to running our route since our course does contain some pretty good climbs, but we had to give it a shot. Well, we hit the goal by 46 seconds. It's not a legit win for us, but if nothing else we learned to suffer this morning. Running 7.6 miles on a dreadmill is 100% suckage. With no wind and nothing to look at except other people working out it absolutely drains the mind and breaks your will to continue. Doing runs like this can only help down the road if I ever find myself struggling mentally during a race. I can draw on days like this and know that I can press on.

This weekend looks absolutely gorgeous. Temps in the 70's and plenty of sunshine. I'm ready to get on the bike and bring the pain. Later taters.

Finally Recovered.

Good grief! It seems like I've been dealing with this sore throat/cold thing for a month. Although in reality, it's only been a week, but I think I'm officially over it. I had a good run this morning with Dr. Nitrous and the Zoomer. We kept a fairly lively pace for our typical 7.6 miler through the Tiny Kingdom. We fell a little short of our goal pace, but it wasn't because of the extra snot I've been carrying around.

This weekend should be one for the books. The Zoomer and I will be staging a multi-brick session from my garage on Saturday. The plan is (after a warm up) to get on our trainers for 15 minutes of fast paced pain then transition into a 2 mile hard as you can go run. Then, repeat as long as you can. I'm shooting for 4 reps of this before calling it quits and heading over to Super Sams for a bit of deliciousness. I'm not sure if my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich counts as proper recovery, but I'm not changing my ways.

Lastly, I've been working on an invention of sorts. I've started noticing a lot of pros using a bottle mounted to their aero bars. Not the Aero Drink! I have that and I hate it! The device holds a bottle in a regular bottle cage attached to your bars. Due to my bike fit, my aero bars won't support a full length bottle. My plan is to devise a system that makes use of a smaller bottle but still contains a straw just like the dysfunctional aero drink. More on this to come. Later taters.

Dear Triathlon

Here's an email that I sent to Dr. Nitrous today. Thought I'd share.

Dear Triathlon,

Please let this serve as notice that due to lingering effects of a sore throat, sinus pressure, continuously feeling like crap as of late, until further notice I am officially retiring from the sport of Triathlon. In turn, I will be sleeping in, eating what I want, and buying pants with elastic waistbands to make room for the impending gut expansion. I renounce any high ideals I might have had regarding striving to continually challenge myself and leave others in my dust. The amount of money that I will safe on entry fees and gear, I will put toward buying that nice set of golf clubs and getting a country club membership. I bequeath all of my power gels, apparel, and aforementioned gear to the triathlon community (aka: those misfortunate souls who haven’t figured out that you are evil yet). With that, I bid you adieu!

P.S. – You can stick this notice where the sun doesn’t shine. It’s going to take a lot more than a runny nose to keep me from kicking your ass every day. Game on!

Here's the Doctor's response. Love it.

Dear Bullet,

Thank you for submitting you comments. However, I regret to inform you that I do not care about you. I have broken down the most elite of your species and I will continue to torment the likes of you until all the oceans and lakes dry up. I will continue to recruit new members at an alarming rate, and it will take them years to figure out that I do not care about them either. My human agents, in the form of race directors, have sold their souls to me, and I will continue to make them rich as they aid in my quest for world domination. You may be one of the few enlightened humans who are able to see through my facade, but you do not stand a chance of changing the minds of those who are committed to me. I will destroy their lives, and they will not even see it coming. On the contrary, they will think they are actually doing a good thing. So, congratulations on escaping the matrix, but freedom is not all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Sincerely,

Triathlon.

Come On Somebody Why Don't You Run?

Some how I've got this hokey country song stuck in my head. At one point it was getting annoying, but the more I think of it, it's a little fitting to my training right now. All I've wanted to do as of late is run. That's RUN! Yep, I'm not talking about the boring recovery runs or the garbage miles. I'm talking like running like you been caught doing something you shouldn't. Running has been my release as of late and my quads have been screaming at me.

I just received my new K-Swiss K-Onas in the mail on Friday and have been doing my best to wear them out since then. I absolutely love these shoes. They're super light and have these neat little holes in the bottom to drain all of the sweat that typically fills up my shoes during a race. They actually fit my wide foot which is an added bonus. They're great with or without socks. Enough words, here's a pic.

So since getting the shoes, I've been doing the best to work toward race tempo. My workouts have typically consisted of above race pace intervals. For the last couple of weeks, I've alternated between 2:00 mins hard/2:00 recovery, 2 miles hard, 4 min recovery, 1 mile hard/.5 mile recovery. Hopefully soon I'll be able to stretch these distances out into one consistent run. Endurance at race speed just isn't there yet, but here's to hope!

I'm about 1 month out from the first race which is a short little reverse Tri up in Podunk, AL. It'll be a good warm up and test for my fitness. There's always hope for hardware, but it just really depends on who shows up. More of that later. For now, it's time to RUN!